Archives For June 2015

A few weeks ago, we began requesting precinct-level election results from counties in Oregon. The Secretary of State maintains county-level results, typically in electronic PDFs, so to get down to precinct level we need to ask county clerks across the state. Many of them post precinct results on their sites, but some don’t, so we emailed a few to ask for results from 2000-2014. In doing so, we were prepared to pay reasonable fees for them, as the Oregon Revised Statutes permit.

Local officials were quick to get back to us in every case, and their responses were straightforward. Here’s an example, from Art Harvey, the Josephine County clerk and recorder:

The reports you are interested in are available in PDF format.

The cost would be $10.00 per election.

Other counties charged fees ranging from $25 (Umatilla County) to $45 (Wasco County) to $86.50 (Linn County, which sent us paper print-outs of election results that we’ll be scanning). And then there’s Tillamook County, where Tassi O’Neil, the county clerk there, has set a price of $664 for PDF copies of precinct-level results for elections from 2000-2014.

We wondered how that price was calculated, so we asked. Ms. O’Neil responded:

The fee for each election is $3.75 locate fee and then .25 cents per page. That is the fee if it is a paper copy or if we send it in a PDF. That is the charge that the Oregon Revised Statues say that we can/or should charge.

That is true, but there are two points here: One is that members of the public are being charged for pages of an electronic document. There are no paper copies involved here. The other is that the Oregon Revised Statutes also say this:

The custodian of any public record may furnish copies without charge or at a substantially reduced fee if the custodian determines that the waiver or reduction of fees is in the public interest because making the record available primarily benefits the general public.

As OpenElections is a non-profit effort dedicated to publishing machine-readable election results that can be freely used by anyone, we’re pretty sure that our project primarily benefits the general public. We’ve asked for such a waiver or reduction of the $664 and are awaiting a reply. Oregon law also permits us to appeal a denial of a fee waiver or reduction to the Attorney General, and we will be pursuing that option should it become necessary.